Taylor Hicks Sues ex-producer over iTunes releases

The Smoking Gun has obtained the court papers of a lawsuit filed by Taylor Hicks against Will Smith, who produced some demos for Taylor in 2001. 

On July 24, Smith tried to release one of the demos, “The Fall”, to radio.  He made the dubious claim that Taylor preferred releasing “The Fall” rather than his current single, “Do I Make You Proud”.

Of course, it’s not as if Taylor had talked to the guy since 2001…

On July 25, Taylor obtained a temporary injunction against Smith preventing him from releasing “The Fall” for at least 10 days.  An email from Smith, filled with numerous spelling, grammar and punctuation errors, was attached to the court filing.  The following excerpt will give you an idea what a piece of work Smith is:

I am not going to radio I am going to iTunes….if Taylor does not go negative…I am referring to Taylor personally, then anything in his past that would reflect negatively on him will stay there.  In the past. I have no desire to harm him…only help him and myself.

Veiled threat, anyone?  Yikes.

Smith didn’t give up trying to profit from Taylor’s new-found fame. Despite the temporary injunction, Smith went ahead and released the songs to iTunes anyway.  “Son of a Carpenter” and “In Your Time” were up on iTunes earlier this week.  After Taylor’s legal team filed this latest action,  the songs were removed.  This could get interesting, so stay tuned…

corrected some dates…